Why are all of the ship designs so old?

Mohrgan

Mohrgan
I have noticed that the Ships we are flying in game are often of century old designs. I don;t mind really, but it does make me curious. The newest ship design is the Type 7, it was first made in 3290. The oldest ship design is the Python, originally designed in 2700. It is now 3300 in-game, and that makes the Python a 600 year old design.

It makes little sense that a ship design would be in service for half a century or more. Even today technology doesn't last that long, and the speed of change only gets faster, not slower.

This is not a gripe. All of the ships seem great and I am not calling out the Dev's, nor dissatisfied with the available ships. In fact, am fixing to up-grade from a 386 year old design (Adder) to a 422 year old design (Asp). I am just curious how these dates are justified by the lore or parameters of the game. Thanks.
 

Alex988

A
You can still hunt with bow and arrow today. Maybe the modern bows are made out of some fancy materials but the principle is still very old :D
 

Exard3k

Exard3k
Because the Feds and the Empire are bad guys exploiting their population, good news: We now have the Alliance spreading prosperity across the Galaxy (and new ship designs).
 

Frankfort

F
The Original game iss 30 year old they just upgraded the old ships

the same with ships/aircraft their designs ar sometimes 40 50 years old and stil sailing /flying
 

talshiarr

talshiarr
Well, the Russians are still flying around those 55 year old TU-95 Bears because they're cost efficient, easy to maintain, and have had their innards ripped out and modernized multiple times. Probably the same goes with Elite's conservative ship lines. I always laugh when I see ridiculous spiky, tentacled monstrosities like the Romulan dreadnaught in the first J. J. Abrams Star Trek reboot.
 

Im_Lost

I
If it's not broken why fix it.

Plus it's not like the materials they are made from is actually going to decay in space :)
 

Alric

A
Mohrgan said:
the speed of change only gets faster, not slower.
Click to expand...

We happen to be living in a long period of progress. But it doesn't always work that way. Progress can stagnate and even be lost. In the years between now and the game period we would have a lot of things that could stunt progress. The time for sub-light colonisation, nuclear war, AI wars, the limitations of light-speed communication in a galactic
Civilisation, and so on.

Given the sort of technology in the game, it's also possible that they have long since refined what they have to a point where there's very little more they can do with it without some fundamental breakthroughs.
 

Tono Kopec

Tono Kopec
My attempt at some lore logic:
Over such a large area controlled by a few factions, there must be a deliberate effort to standardize design, otherwise local variants and their spare parts would quickly differ and become incompatible, leading to a fragmentation of the transport network. The designs we have today are the agreed best standard for their respective classes. Or not.
 

dermax

D
When something works, it can stick around for a long time. Look at chainmail; it's been around for thousands of years and yet it's still in use in meat-packing plants and places where it's important not to get cut. It's changed some, evolved, but it would be recognizable to the ancient Celts.

On the other hand, a six hundred year old design would be like sailing Columbus's ships against a Nuclear Submarine. A lot changes in that time. There was what, about fifty years between Kitty Hawk and the Moon landing?

That said, the bottom line is that this game is part of a series. Iconic ships manage to stick around... the TIE Fighter design comes to mind. Sci-fi ships last forever :)
 

Serpentstar

S
Hrrmmmm. Cars started out with 4 wheels a hundred years ago. Now they still have 4 wheels. Is this configuration bad?

These ships are aerodynamic, some are atmospheric even... How does that make them "Old and out-dated" Hell, the Asp looks as if it would be capable of water landing, bases on it's hull and potential water displacement appearance.

Try fuel scooping flying a brick or with a single wing off to the left.

For anything dealing with flight, symmetry is an achievement, not an aging design concept..
 

Julio Montega

Julio Montega
Tono Kopec said:
My attempt at some lore logic:
Over such a large area controlled by a few factions, there must be a deliberate effort to standardize design, otherwise local variants and their spare parts would quickly differ and become incompatible, leading to a fragmentation of the transport network. The designs we have today are the agreed best standard for their respective classes. Or not.
Click to expand...

I agree with your opinion on this topic.
Imagine a backwater station trying to get spare parts for a newly released ship.
It is better for the fringe to stick with the old proven designs,
also they won't have the tech to produce the new tech anyway.
 

Darkflame

D
Some of the replies clearly only read the thread title :p

Anyway;

It is a curiosity indeed.
Certainly you can expect successful designs to be used again and again for a long time....but it would be variations on a base theme, not the exact same design.

It could be partially explained by the modules however; once a "standard" has become established it can be hard to shift. So the slots for the modules (and presumably stuff like power handling) has
to stay the same. So that puts a few more constraints on the design.

Even then though, Id like too see a few (in-universe) "new" ships in Elite. Could be at either end of the market. New experimental ones using cutting edge (50 year old) designs, or ones that are more like knock-of versions of whats
there already. Cheaper, but pretty unreliable.
 

OnePercent

OnePercent
It doesn't surprise me, Humans figured out how to make their own mini black holes and pass through it and also know how to bend space and time to their whim they also know how to terraform planets.

the humans in Elite lore are ridiculously advanced, So I assume the ship HULL itself doesn't need upgrading but the components do.

However, Look on the bright side! It means E:D have super sleek new advanced looking designs coming out then no? they automatically have a lot of room for improvement considering all the ships are old as.
 
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CMDR Canaris

C
Forgive my rambling thoughts on the subject but there are two ways of looking at the situation:

A 600 year old spacecraft design would (usually) be entirely outmoded by progress in materials science or basic engineering. Even if it was based on the same hull it would be virtually unrecognizable. Maybe this is the case: the Python as we know it is wholly different from the one that was first commissioned in 2700.

That said, there's a good reason old wet navy ships were scrapped for new designs instead of continuously upgraded for a century. There are, however, instances of various things being upgraded over time. Look at the B-52 or the C-130. The only reason these are still in service is because there's been no reason to replace them that's economical. Perhaps this is also true of the Python. Perhaps it's so good at what it does there's no rush to replace it.

Surely, though, in the course of 600 years someone would come up with some innovations to render it obsolete or demand a serious overhaul.
 
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